A Tale of Two Monday's

The weird thing about last week is that I was off on Wednesday for my Birthday, back to work on Thursday and then our office was closed on Friday.  It was like having two Monday's and two Friday's.  It was a three day week that felt like forever and I didn't feel rested at all but that's what I get for being that weird person who insists on hoarding vacation days. 

The older I get the less significant my birthday feels and I was totally prepared to hate it this year. I even started a diet two days before that cuts out sugar among other things and hid my birth date on Facebook.  I don't know.  Maybe it's because it's the first year my parents are gone or because it was on a Wednesday.  Maybe it's just because I've had so darn many.  After a while it's just like, oh this again? This year when I thought about my Birthday instead of cake or festivities the only significance that crossed my mind is that I'm another year closer to my imminent demise. Totally morbid I know, but that's all I thought of and not in a bad way if such a thing could not be thought of in a bad way.  It was more of a calculated assessment of time.  I wasn't necessarily sad about my Birthday, just blah about it.  Maybe I was bummed by the general lack of interest in my day of birth more than anything else. 

The only thing on my Birthday agenda was to take that day off and get a facial.  I knew that even if I didn't have the birthday blues being at work would surely push me over the edge and I just couldn't bring myself to go there.  I'm pretty sure I would have spent the day laying in bed alternating between staring at the ceiling pondering the meaning of life and reading but my husband intervened.  I said he didn't have to, but he took the day off anyway and made plans.  After my facial I came home, ate breakfast and relaxed with a book for a while before we headed downtown for a movie and dinner.  I was amazed at how different downtown looks during the middle of the day.  It was fun trying to identify the tourists; and I think that's all there was because it was a random Wednesday afternoon and everyone else was at work.  What wasn't fun is watching MJ eat an ice cream cone and not having have one for myself myself.  The streets were deserted and so was the movie theater.  There was one other person besides us at the 2:10pm showing of Insurgent and I didn't see a single customer on our way in or out.  The movie was really good and after that we walked over to Rei do Gado Brazilian Steakhouse.  I'm on a meat kick and we've already been to Fogo De Chao so I wanted to give it a try.  It looks like an overly ornate hotel restaurant from the 90's but the food was really good.  I ate so much meat I was still full the next morning.  

The lone Birthday Pic

I even tried to skip out on the annual friends Birthday dinner.  I didn't not want to do a birthday dinner nor did I want to but I threw it together at the last minute anyway after one of my girl friends asked me about it.  When I said, not this year she said YES-we should.  We met up at Yard House on Thursday after work.  One of my friends just had a baby and it was her first time drinking wine in a year so if nothing else, I'm really glad to have been a part of breaking her wine fast and the six of us had a really fun time.  It's the 3rd year in a row and I'm so glad I allowed myself to be convinced that we should do it again.

If it's your Birthday and there is no official picture to commemorate it, did your Birthday still happen?  The answer is yes, because social media be damned if we could stop aging by forgoing photo ops none of us would be any older than thirty.  It's also still your Birthday even if you didn't eat cake.  Both are new revelations for me.  My husband is not a picture taker.  He didn't offer that day and I didn't ask because of the whole blah about my birthday thing and there were none at the girls dinner although they did sing Happy Birthday which was awkward and awesome all at the same time.  The only picture I got to commemorate my Birthday was a picture of the free restaurant dessert that I didn't even eat.  I don't think I've gone a single Birthday without an official "It's my Birthday!!" pic so it bummed me out for about five minutes.  I only drooled over the cake for five seconds before I slid it down the table for someone else to eat.  I got over it and fun was had by all.
  
MJ started asking what I wanted and what I wanted to do over a month ago.  My answer was always nothing or I don't know.  Usually, I can come up with something but I wouldn't give him anything.  I had no ideas for my mom or sister either.  I didn't want anything to do with with my Birthday this year and I really can't pinpoint why, but instead of giving me the nothing that I asked for he gave me everything.  He made it special even if I didn't want it to be.   He gave me himself that day (along with an Amazon gift card) and that matters much more than having a picture of any it.  

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Fine Dining is Fun and Funny

Over the weekend MJ took me on a surprise date.  That morning he said we're going somewhere nice and we're leaving at 4:45pm.  I waited promptly until 4:25pm to rush around and get ready.  I'm really low maintenance like that.  We'd spent most of the day doing fun things like cleaning the windows (him) and vacuuming floors (me).  The weather was gorgeous though and demanding to be enjoyed so I was glad to get out of the house.

I knew something was up when he washed a load of dress shirts and reached for his dress shoes instead of flip flops or chucks.  He is not a dressing up guy and rarely does it even if I beg so I was really wondering where we were going that would cause him to go to such lengths.  When we showed up at Bertrand at Mr. A's it all made sense.  They have a dress code.  Button ups required and no open toed shoes are ever permitted so he really had no choice in the matter.  It's kind of an interesting set up because it's on the top floor of an office building.  You don't feel like you are going to a restaurant until the elevator doors open at the top. 

They don't call it fine dining for nothing.  From the minute you walk in they treat you like kind of a big deal.  We were greeted politely and led to our table by a man in a suite and tie who held the door open for us, pulled out my chair and laid the cloth napkin in my lap.  Being the country bumpkin that I am I didn't realize what he was doing until he said, "For your lap."   Once seated our waitress rattled off a long list of specials half of which I could not remember once she walked away.  I was impressed that she can even say half the words most of which I had no idea what they were let alone recite it all from memory.  She brought us our wine selection and poured just a little bit in MJ's glass before patiently stepping back and waiting for him to taste it and give his approval.  I'm curious to know if you are really allowed to say no.  Can you say you don't like it and would like to try a different bottle.  Then, what if you don't like that one?  Is it just a formality to pretend you have a choice when in reality all bottles will end up on your tab anyway? I am happy with $2 wine from Walmart so there is no chance I'll ever reject a $30 something bottle of wine.  I don't know how these things work.    

At a nice restaurant you are the star and servers stalk you, but in a good way.  They are most definitely watching you even if you can't see them doing it.  You don't even get a chance to pour your second glass of wine before they are doing it for you and there is no begging for more bread.  It just shows up.  One person seated us, another took our order, another brought us our entree's and yet another refilled our water glasses never letting it go below half.  They are an army ready to leap into service so that the minute you look like you might need something they are right there.  The only way to make them stop is to stop eating or drinking but you won't do that since that's what you came for.  They were so attentive that I don't even feel bad when our waitress offered to take our picture.  Twice, because the sun was causing too much back light the first time.  You don't have to give up your first born to get a dessert menu or the check either.  They don't rush you, and yet when you are ready to wrap it up it's right there and the service is definitely reflected in the cost of your steak. 

The food was good too.  It better be right?  I got filet Mignon and MJ went for half filet and half short rib.  Our dessert was like a giant Twix bar but better.  Sitting outside was AMAZING.  The weather was perfect for it and I actually felt kind of bad for the people sitting inside because they were really missing out on the weather and the view because they don't put pull up the sunshades on the giant wall of windows inside until after the sun sets.

Fine dining is funny.  There is always that awkward moment where the amount of times your water glass has been refilled borders on embarrassing and someone is picking up the garnish that fell off your entree plate and scraping your crumbs off the table with their fingers where you kind of feel weird that someone is serving you so astutely.  It's also fun though because it's nice to be catered to and get the star treatment every now and then.  I'm just a little bit of a restaurant snob.  My Applebee's days are done.  I need some ambiance when I dine out.  The VIP five star treatment is not a necessity but it sure is nice every now and then.  Thanks to the husband for such a sweet date. Neither one of us had ever been there before and now I want to go back sometime to experience it at night. 

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They Hate Us

Is it still a thing to be annoyed by couples that sit on the same side of the booth?  I stumbled across this on some person's random Facebook page.


Dear weird couple that sits on the same side of the booth.  Do you not realize that it's not a bar it's a table and thus there are two sides of the table to sit on?  Are you that joined at the hip and co dependent that you cannot bear to sit a few feet apart for an entire meal?  Do you realize how annoying it is?  When you sit across from each other you can talk and look each other in the eye.  You can actually see your partner and that is much more romantic then craning your neck to talk to each other side by side.  This same sider seating is very annoying and creepy.  Just the sight of it drives people insane.  It's as if you are desperate to proclaim to the world that you are that in love that you must sit next to each other. 
-Source, unknown/anonymous. 

Sitting on the same side since 2008

"They hate us you know,"  I said to MJ one time when we were sitting next to each other at a restaurant.  He had no idea it was even a thing to be hated for until I told him that a lot of people seem to have a problem with couples who choose to sit next to each other instead of across from each other.

We are that weird couple who sits on the same side of the booth.  I am the instigator and he allows it.  He slides into one side and I side into the same side right beside him.  There is no insidious purpose behind it.  We are not desperate to proclaim that we are so in love.  It's just a preference and one of many choices that one might encounter when dining out.  Table or booth?  Bar or Dining room?  Straw or no straw? Dessert or no Dessert?  You get the idea.  You go in you sit, someone takes your order and you eat.  It all plays out the same regardless of where anybody sits.

We are not sucking face.  We are not feeling each other up.  There might be some hand holding while we wait for our food and a few cheek kisses here and there but it's not excessive in any way so I don't really see how that is anyone's business but ours anyways.

When the food comes I have easy access for snagging a bite off of his plate and I enjoy the intimacy of having our own little private dinner.  Yes, in a public restaurant.  And I do not find it at all difficult to hold a conversation when we are next to each other.  I glance over to my left or my right and bam, there he is.  No neck craning involved.  We talk and laugh just as well as we would across from one another. 

Call me weird, but I just like being next to him.   Even at home I want to be right next to him if we are watching TV or when we go to bed.  Lest you think I am totally smothering him; I do give him his space.  We are not co dependent.  My husband travels for work every year and I do not fall apart without him.  We do our own thing.  I go out with my friends.  He participates in extra curricular activities and hangs out with his friends.  At home we are free to retreat to two separate living spaces and do our own thing.  We are not joined at the hip. I just like sitting next to him.

It's not my problem if this bothers people.  The only time I can recall being annoyed by this behavior is when I was in a miserable relationship or when I was single and sad about it.  My negative reaction to same siders had less to do with the couple and more to do with my own personal issues.  It just doesn't really seem like a big deal to me.  Certainly not something to be that annoyed by and I didn't even know "same sider" was a thing until I read that post.

How do you feel about same siders?  Do it, hate it or don't care?

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What's in a Blog Name?

Yes, you are in the right place, it's just that I have changed my blog name for the fourth time. That's four times in going on six years of this blog's history. Five if you count the blog I originally started on Word Press.  Is that a lot? I think it is.

When I changed it to Pink Sunshine it felt right and I was certain that I would never feel the need to change it again but towards the end of last year a new name infiltrated my thoughts.  I couldn't get it out of my head and Pink Sunshine didn't feel like me anymore.  I would have felt weird having my blog name be my parent's address while they were living there so it never occurred to me that Mahogany Drive was the perfect forever blog name until after they moved to Vegas last year.  The move drummed up all the feelings of nostalgia I ever had about my childhood home.  I moved in when I was in 1st grade and didn't move out until the year I graduated from college.  Mahogany Drive is the last place that we all lived together as a family.  It's where I grew up.  There are so many memories and an entire era of my life tied up in that house.  To this day, the land line to Mahogany Drive is the only phone number I can recite without a hitch.  I've since forced myself to remember MJ's cell phone number but it still takes me a minute to string the numbers together from memory and sometimes I still forget.   I don't remember phone numbers like I used to, but I think the land line to Mahogany Drive will be etched in my memory forever.  It made us all a little sad to know that number was no longer 'ours' even though we had stopped using it after my parents got cell phones.

I pulled out an old flash drive in hopes of finding a picture of our old house on Mahogany.  I didn't find any.  I'll have to search the real photo albums.  You know, those books that people used to put pictures in?  I didn't find what I was looking for but I enjoyed the trip down memory lane that took me back to 2006.  That flash drive is a treasure trove of pictures and videos that I don't even remember saving.  I lost a lot of pictures when my Mac crashed last year but the ones I was most worried about are on that flash drive.  Our first date.  Our first overnight trip, the floor plan for our first home together that I saved off the website.  And the more recent lost photos (including our honeymoon) are carefully archived in photo albums on Facebook from back in the days when I consistently put everything there.  As I dug through the photos that MJ did recover from my Mac I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of pictures that were there, especially because I can still remember the days before digital cameras.  I take pictures of anything and everything because it's easy, because I can, and my camera/phone is by my side 24/7.  Pictures are a dime a dozen.  It's nothing to take five shots just to get the perfect one so I have almost identical pictures of a lot of the same things.  I should delete the duplicates but I don't.  Just in case.  I have pictures of beef stew, pictures of my yoga mat, random pictures of the sky.  They flood my phone, consume all the memory and I become annoyed over having to decide which to keep and which to delete.  Which ones were real moments and which ones were just in case I wanted to Instagram it or blog about it later?

I took a Polaroid camera to 5th grade camp and in in high school I was always the one with the camera at every event.  I sent my rolls of film out for developing by mail because it was cheaper and patiently awaited my return packet so anxious to see how they turned out.  I have always had a love for picture taking because I want those memories but the over abundance of images has made me slightly indifferent to how valuable and precious these pictures really are.  Looking through that old flash drive made me realize how detached I had become.  Each photo back then seemed to count so much more than they do now.   Photo taking was reserved for special times and special things.  You had to make a point to bring your camera with you and if you forgot it all was lost.  You didn't take ten pictures of the same pose or five pictures of your wine glass because there were only so many shots. You wouldn't waste a frame on something so trivial and there was time, effort and money involved in seeing the finished product.  Even after digital taking pictures of chicken or a margarita still wasn't a thing.  Without social media nobody thought so hard about documenting the mundane because it was about the moment and the people you were with not when and how you were going to share it later.  I remember lovingly selecting each photo to place in my photo album.  Now they just sit around in a hard drive somewhere taking up space and if I did decide to put them in an album more than half of them wouldn't make the cut.

Blogging is not a passing fancy or a trend for me.  I plan to blog for years to come and once I got the new name in my head the old name started to feel like one I had already grown out of.   I'm not posting as often as I used to but I'm okay with that because it's reminiscent of the old days when it was less forced and more organic.  Less about numbers and more about writing.  Looking at those photos from before blogging made me remember how excited I was just to have a place on the internet that was all my own and a time when that was the only reason anybody did it.  It reminded me of just how precious each and every photo really is and why I started blogging in the first place.  Memories are precious and writing is what I love to do.  I want to get back to that. 

Can I just say how excited I was to claim the name for all of my social media accounts without having to add any funky underscores or additional numbers? This name was just sitting there waiting for me to take it.  The only thing I have not switched over is my feed burner feed name.  I actually have twenty-one precious subscribers that I will probably lose forever if I make them update it so I'll sit on that for a minute before I make a decision.  If I know me, I'll probably end up changing it because it's going to bug the heck out of me that it doesn't match everything else.

So what's in a blog name?  Everything.  Once upon a time Mahogany Drive housed my family and everything I loved and owned.  It's also who I am.  I can't think of a better name for a blog that will continue to house my pictures, memories and thoughts for years to come.  I'm never changing my blog name again.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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Fun While it Lasted

Picnic at Balboa Park

You will never guess what he was actually doing

This odd looking maneuver is the end of MJ's cartwheel!  He claimed he could do one, but I kept forgetting to make him show me.  I can't believe that it has taken me (a former gymnast) seven years to get around to seeing this man's cartwheel.  I have no idea how he ended up in that position at the end of a cartwheel but technically, he can do it.  He needs to work on his form but I promised to help.

 

After my parents moved to Vegas I was happy to find out that they had decided to come back every four months for my Dad's Doctor's appointments at UCSD Medical Center.  My dad can see a doctor there who knows about kidney's but not one who does kidney transplants and is used to seeing patients that have had one, so they decided it was worth it for that reason alone to make the drive three times a year.  Plus, they get to see me.  The timing for this appointment couldn't have been better since I had Friday and Monday off for President's Day.  The weather couldn't have been any better either so we decided to take advantage of it and do a Picnic at Balboa Park.  Valentine's Day was a footnote.  We went to dinner that night just to go, but we are not big Valentine's Day people so despite the parade of Red and Pink on social media and the random gift shops that popped up in gas station parking lots selling tacky stuffed animals and garish balloons it was just another date night for us.  I didn't even get a picture, and MJ forgot his wallet!

My mom and I spent an entire day running errands and we were in Kohl's so long that by the time we came out we were shocked to see that the sun had gone down but we knew exactly what happened.  We are REALLY slow shoppers! By the time we finished we were starving.  I made a Chipotle run while my mom ran into the Grocery store to get Ice cream sandwiches for my dad.  I was sitting in my car waiting for her.  She sent me a text message asking me what kind of Girl Scout cookies I wanted.  I knew I wanted the Peanut Butter Patties not to be confused with Peanut Butter Sandwich but I couldn't remember the exact name so I checked.  A Girl Scout asked me if I would like some cookies and I said, "My mom is coming to buy them, I just wasn't sure what kind."  Tagalongs, I texted her back.  When she got into the car with the cookies she told me as soon she said she wanted Tagalongs one of the girl scouts said, "Oh, your daughter was here, asking about these."  We laughed when I told her I felt about 12 years old saying that my mom is buying them.   No matter how old I get have to admit that sometimes I like that.  When you are an adult ensconced in bill paying, laundry, doing and fitting it all in when you are not at work it's nice to feel like a kid again sometimes.  Up to and including your dad driving you nuts because that is what he does, but loving him anyway. 

We shopped.  We went to the movies.  We cooked spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.  And then sooner then you can believe it the weekend is over and you are back at work, but it was so much fun while it lasted.

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I'm Reading Again!

For someone who loves reading so much I can't believe this is the first book review to ever grace my blog but I shouldn't be.  I'm sadly aware that I haven't done a whole lot of reading over the last five years.  Yes, FIVE.  I'm blaming MJ because the reading stopped the year we got married.  I was so distracted by my him and everything else that I didn't make time for it.  Then I was so occupied with blogging and trying to write my own book that I forgot how much I enjoy it.  I didn't make New Year's resolutions, but if I did read more would be at the top of the list and I'm trying to make that happen.  I checked out five books from the library over Christmas Break and finished four in January.  After one renewal I knew I was going to run out of time and that one would be going back to unread.  That last pick turned out to be my favorite one of the bunch.  When I returned them I limited myself to two because realistically, with work and everything else I figured that's all I'd have time for.  I already finished one!  Instead of choosing from just the 'free' or 'cheap' books off of Amazon I went to the library and found books I was really interested in reading so when I have spare time I reaching for a book instead of the remote.  And they are still free!  Project read more in 2015 is going good so far.

Without further ado, in the order in which they were read....

Best Friends Forever, Jennifer Weiner 
Addie Downs and Valerie Adler were eight when they first met and decided to be best friends forever. But, in the wake of tragedy and betrayal during their teenage years, everything changed. Val went on to fame and fortune. Addie stayed behind in their small Midwestern town. Destiny, however, had more in store for these two. And when, twenty-five years later, Val shows up at Addie’s front door with blood on her coat and terror on her face, it is the beginning of a wild adventure for two women joined by love and history who find strength together that they could not find alone. -Via Amazon

My thoughts:
I really liked it!  I was interested right from the start and that remained throughout.  Addie's friend Val was a super annoying character, but she was so annoying because that was her character and the author did a really good job of conveying that.  There was a really cute love story worked in there as well.

Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult
Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens--until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes--or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show--destroying the closest of friendships and families. -Via Amazon

My thoughts:
I've never read a Jodi Picoult book I didn't like.  She had me at My Sister's Keeper and at some point I want to read everything she has written.  There are quite a few at my public library, with multiple copies even, so I should be able to get my hands on quite a few from there.  She is an amazing storyteller and my only critique about it is that sometimes she's such a good storyteller that the storytelling words go on longer than I wish they would.  Sometimes I just want her to get to the point and found myself skipping over a sentence or two to get there.  It does not prevent me from wanting to read more from her though.  There was also a lot of going back and forth between the past and the present which was confusing at first but I got used to it. The story line was really interesting.   We see the shooter as a monster and based on their actions they are, but there are two sides to every story and this book does a wonderful job of telling both.  We get some insight into what can turn a person into a monster and it is heartrendingly sad.  She makes the reader love him a little bit which is really hard to do because he has ruined so many lives and in the end I felt totally conflicted.  

Ladies' Night, Mary Kay Andrews 
Grace Stanton’s life as a rising media star and beloved lifestyle blogger takes a surprising turn when she catches her husband cheating and torpedoes his pricey sports car straight into the family swimming pool.  Grace suddenly finds herself locked out of her palatial home, checking account, and even the blog she has worked so hard to develop in her signature style.  Moving in with her widowed mother, who owns and lives above a rundown beach bar called The Sandbox, is less than ideal.  So is attending court-mandated weekly "divorce recovery" therapy sessions with three other women and one man for whom betrayal seems to be the only commonality.  When their “divorce coach” starts to act suspiciously, they decide to start having their own Wednesday "Ladies' Night" sessions at The Sandbox, and the unanticipated bonds that develop lead the members of the group to try and find closure in ways they never imagined.  Can Grace figure out a new way home and discover how strong she needs to be to get there? -Via Amazon

My thoughts:
It took me a while to warm up to this book and even half way through I still wasn't sure if I wanted to keep on reading.  I soldiered on because it's really hard for me not to once I start reading or watching anything.  The writing was a little bit repetitive in some places but overall it was a good story.  I was glad I stuck it out to the end, although I'm not sure I would recommend it just because it was so slow and hard to get into.

Girl in Translation, Jean Kwok 
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family’s future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition. Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles. -Via Amazon

My thoughts:
Out of all the books I read in that bunch this one was my favorite!  I read it in all in one day on one chilly glorious Sunday where I spent most of the day in my granny robe cozied up with this book.  The author is an amazing storyteller and captures Kimberly's experience so well.  I really enjoyed this character.  I was rooting for her so hard to make it and overcome the life circumstances that had been thrust upon her.  It's definitely a must read.

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